No wonder Lieberman has been doing so poorly thus far. I caught him on Larry King last night, and he was emphasizing how moderate he is, how he is indeed a conservative Democrat, how he loves working with moderate Republicans like John McCain, etc., etc. Joe: this is the stuff for general election campaigns, not for primaries when you are going after partisan, ideological voters! I briefly worked for the Kemp 1988 presidential campaign as a volunteer, and was baffled by Kemp’s insistence on emphasizing issues of concern largely to black and Latino voters–issues that may indeed be important, but left his (overwhelmingly white) Republican audiences looking puzzled (as did Kemp’s assertion that he is a “liberal democrat”–“small ‘l’, small ‘d’).
The oddest thing about Lieberman’s appearance on King is that his record, except for defense, isn’t all that conservative. In 1999, Lieberman was given a 95 percent rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Actoin, while the American Conservative Union gave him a zero for that year. His lifetime record is more conservative, but still moderately liberal.
Still, though it’s a little late for Lieberman, if he really wants to go after the moderate to conservative vote in the South and West, he can start by doing what he should have done to begin with: making a big issue of the fact that the Democratic Party should not be treating racist demagogue Al Sharpton as a serious candidate worthy of respect, any more than David Duke should have received the respect of the Republican Party when he had his fifteen minutes. Not good for black-Jewish relations, perhaps, but it has the merit of actually being the right thing to do, and what not only Lieberman but the other Dems should have done to begin with. The only problem is, having handled Sharpton with kid gloves until now, any contrary actions by Lieberman would smack of desperation. Then again, his campaign is in fact desperate, and the attention Sharpton will get because of South Carolina would provide Lieberman’s excuse.
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